Saturday, May 1, 2010

Blood Money and Hearing Aids

My hearing aids are pretty small but some-times they feel very large.
[Buy "No Wax"]

A week or so ago I received an email from a English marketing firm that they wanted to give me either $150 or $100 if I would put an ad on my website. A gaming ad would be $150 and an ad in a number of other categories would be $100.

I'm trying to earn enough money for an ipad. Which doesn't justify blood money, does it?

So in the midst of taking these Buddhist precepts, I entered questionable territory here. Not advertising in itself... but ... read on.

They asked me to rewrite a paragraph on my website about my friend Joan Lipkin, who works with the disabled in theatre. They came up with this paragraph:

As the Artistic Director of That Uppity Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri, she specializes in creating work with marginalized populations including people with disabilities, from those with digital hearing aids to those who are wheelchair bound, LGBT youth and women with breast cancer that are accompanied by civic dialogue with the wider community.

They added "digital hearing aids" and made it a link to a vendor of such things.

Then they sent me $100.

So I sent them a letter (just now...):

Janet,

I'm wondering if we could try a different ad. This one is misleading since Joan Lipkin might not work with people with digital hearing aids. I took off this ad, feeling like it would not do justice to her or to Miracle Ear.

Thanks,

Kim

I used to pose this question to the advertising design students. "Suppose you were asked to do a campaign for something that hurt people (cigarettes, for example)... would you do so?" Most answered, "yes." And then I'd tried to persuade them that they shouldn't. Some would switch to fine arts... and others would go on and have successful (design) careers.

So I'll let you know what Janet sends me next. It should be interesting... and probably costly to me.

Who needs an ipad anyway?

I remember one of the early computer graphic pioneers the we invited to the college. He held up a pencil and said, "really, nothing will every be more sensitive than this."